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27 Wylden 1119 The Lost Boys
It was late in the evening of 18 Wylden when the party finally reached the port city of Corsuhn. The city guard briefed them on the local laws and, after a short discussion of options, placed their ranged and large weapons in secure storage until the party was ready to leave town. A few inquiries led the party to the Gem, a seedy saloon near the beach on the south end of town. The proprietor offered up several options for ships that would take passengers to Marhaven, all of which would bear investigation. As the hour was late, the party found accomodations at the Fo'c'sle, a much cleaner placed than the Gem, and hired a local to keep watch on their ox and cargo for the night. The next days were busy. The party took their various trade goods to local merchants and succeeded in converting their ox, tobacco, and other goods into much-welcomed cash. They stocked up on basic supplies and made a few long-delayed purchases as well. Vondran found a weapons dealer who could do some research into the origins of the harpoon he received from Athesto for a reasonable fee while Karu stocked up on shuriken and Tika acquired a pair of masterwork light crossbows, one aquatic and one standard. They showed the captured medallions around knowledgable quarters but found nobody who recognized the symbol. One or two remarked that it looked vaguely similar to an eye used in the symbol of the Servants of the Beast Below, but the Servants have more to their symbol than just the eye. Ash used some of the time to summon a weasel to serve as her familiar. They also booked passage for the entire party, adventurers and clerics of Aegir, on the Triton, a well-regarded passenger ship under the command of a captain Willoughby. Seaman Bob hired on to the Triton's crew for the voyage after asking around and receiving good reports about the ship and her captain. On their last night in Corsuhn, the group had dinner in the bar of the Fo'c'sle. A steady stream of locals came by to shake their hands and praise them for their work against the sahaugin. Then, in contrast to the norm, a group of teenage boys accosted the party. The leader, whom the bartender addressed as Dane, seemed slightly drunk and more than a little belligerent. He fixed upon Vondran and began taunting the darfellan, calling him "whale boy" and similar unflattering things. Vondran kept his cool and ignored the slights, as he did the boy's challenge to a fight. But the boys seemed bent on trouble. When Dane failed to goad Vondran into fighting they picked up chairs and hurled them at the party while Dane threw his beer into Vondran's face. The bartender's plea for calm went unheeded by the savage boys, so Tika tried an intimidating tactic: she cast enlarge person on herself, picked up a table, and slammed it down on one of the boys. The boy ducked but the table made a very impressive smashing sound against the wooden floor. Each of the assailants had sickles, which were legal to carry in Corsuhn. Vondran had no light melee weapons, so he defended himself with his natural bite. Karu used his ghost step ability to get around the table but was ineffective in landing blows against the boys, who proved surprisingly difficult to hit. Still, the boys were clearly outclassed by the heroes' fighting ability. When Tika moved to block their retreat, Dane cursed at them and led his group through the back door and into the night. An apologetic bartender told the party about Dane and his friends. They had been apprentice sailors, he said, aboard a ship run by a captain Mason. Six months before, that ship had been attacked by the Fell Armada and Mason and most of the senior crew were killed or taken. Dane and his three friends had been left stranded in a small lifeboat with the oars broken off and left to die slowly, but a passing freighter had picked them up a few days later. The boys hadn't set foot on a ship since; they spent their days scavenging for coin and valuables on the beach and their nights spending the proceeds in bars and picking fights with strangers. The locals tended to leave the boys be because of their ugly experience, but the problem was clearly getting worse instead of better. Vondran and Karu followed the boys' trail to the beach but were not able to find them. After staking out the beach area for a few hours they gave up and turned in for the night. Early the next morning the party collected their gear and boarded the Triton. Willoughby assigned them cabins on the port side passenger deck. Seaman Bob bunked with the rest of the crew. Late in the first night a crewman woke the heroes with the news that a ship was approaching that looked like a Fell Armada craft. He advised that they had maybe ten minutes before the oncoming ship closed to fighting range. The party donned armor and came topside in time to see a dark ship flying blood-red sails bearing down on them. Willoughby and his crew had the Triton in full trim but the other ship was clearly faster and could not be avoided. Tika prepared the group for battle with a bless spell and Ash spent a spell on mage armor for herself. As the Armada ship approached her crew fired heavy crossbow bolts at the Triton's defenders. A dark, robed figure on the Armada cast a spell on himself and became veiled in shadow. The ship drew close enough for missile fire. Karu took a position in the crow's nest with Loki's crossbow and fired bolts downward at the oncoming ship's crew, who used the many turret-mounted heavy crossbows on board to return fire. As the Armada ship grappled and closed with the Triton, a pair of gray wolflike creatures clambered aboard from the opposite side unseen by the crew and the party. One charged at Vondran and bit him from behind while the other attacked and killed one of Willoughby's crew. Ash lobbed an orb of sound at the Armada mage and missed. The mage responded by performing a baleful transposition that put Ash on the bow of the pirate ship and one of the pirates in her place on the Triton. Now surrounded by enemies, Ash clutched her staff and prepared to defend herself. Tika saw the grey wolflike creatures attacking and did her best to defend the embattled sailors. Two more boarded the ship and one charged directly at her, landing a nasty bite. The fight dragged on slowly. The party had a very difficult time hitting the attackers, and when they did hit they seemed to do little damage. Vondran continued to trade blows with one of the woflike creatures and Tika battled another. A third climbed to the crow's nest to engage Karu, who put down the crossbow in favor of his melee weapons. Loki jumped the gap to engage the pirate captain. The captain transformed into a werewolf and bit Loki, who was thrown back and fell over the side into the sea. He charged up a psychic strike and climbed back onto the ship. Karu outmaneuvered his opponent and managed to induce him to fall to the deck. The wolf cried out in pain at the fall and then again as Karu's shuriken hit him for a telling shot. Vondran jumped to the attacking ship to help Loki and was pursued by the lead wolf the whole way. Ash fought off two pirates with her staff. She quickly learned that the grey wolves had spell resistance but the other pirates did not. She used acid splash to chip away at the pirates' strength and blows from her staff to keep them at bay. Tika realized that most of the pirate crew were werewolves and would be resistant to damage from weapons that were not silver. She had a silver weapon -- a family heirloom dagger left with her as a baby -- but felt it inadequate to the purpose. Instead she took cover in a lifeboat and maneuvered within reach of Ash to provide some healing. As Vondran and Loki focused on the captain and the mage, Ash was freed up to provide support in the form of magic missiles. As they took damage the pirates began to transform into their fearsome hybrid forms and dropped their cutlasses in favor of their natural bite and claws. Vondran's silver harpoon sliced through them easily; he was able to fell several with the help of the rest of the team. Finally, after a long and desperate battle, the attackers lay dead on the decks. The Triton's crew had suffered heavy casualties but was still able to sail. The party collected what valuables they could find from the pirates' bodies and dumped the rest overboard. The grey wolves in death slowly reverted back to their natural forms -- the forms of Dane and his friends. Now it was clear why the Triton had been targeted. Dane and his friends had become sea wolves, magical shape-changers who could transmit their curse with a bite. With 18 days before the next full moon, those bitten would need to find clerical remove curse spells in that time to avoid falling under the curse. The attacking ship, whose placard bore the name Blood Moon, was relatively undamaged and the party claimed it for their own. Captain Willoughby had no objection to this -- it was the spoils of a battle won by the group, after all -- but with so many of his crew injured he could not spare the men to run it. He also advised strongly against the party trying to sail anywhere near civilized ports with those trademark blood-red sails. In the end, the group decided to strike the sails on the Blood Moon and tow her behind the Triton. The journey continued for another day without incident. The Triton was slowed a bit by the drag of the second ship but Willoughby assured the passengers that they were still on schedule to reach Marhaven on the 26th. That night, Karu heard scraping noises and roused the party to investigate. They saw shadowy figures hunched over the lines on the Blood Moon. They ran to the stern of the ship and saw five rat-like figures trying to cut or bite through the tow lines. As they watched two more struck at the party from behind. Tika, Loki and Karu grabbed the tow lines and pulled the ships closer together while Vondran and Ash fought. Vondran's harpoon made short work of the two wererats on the Triton while Ash sent magic missiles at the wererats on the other ship. Heavy crossbow bolts flew at the party in a volley, but the reload time proved to be the rats' undoing. By the time a second volley was ready the ships were within easy jumping range. Vondran and Loki jumped to the other ship to melee while Karu threw shuriken and Tika and Ash used spells at range. One wererat after another fell quickly. A more thorough search of the Blood Moon revealed the lair of the wererats in the ship's bilges. The party found a few more assorted valuables there and made sure there was nothing left alive on the ship. The Triton pulled into Marhaven's northeast docks late on the 26th of Wylden. The party pried off the name plate from the Blood Moon and had it rope-towed into a slip in the shipyard. She would need new linens and rigging, and a new name, before she would be ready to sail again. It was late, so the party bedded down for the night in their captured ship. In the morning, when word got around of their return, they would become celebrities in Marhaven.
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